July 11, 2004

TURKEY NOT FAKE: NYT

An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.

'Because of an editing error, an article in Business Day yesterday about the appointment of Ian M. Cook as chief operating officer at the Colgate-Palmolive Company referred incorrectly to another executive who was named a vice chairman. The executive, Lois D. Juliber, is a woman.'

Where do I go? The I. M. Cook reference, with so much potential for turkey puns? The confused gender thing? What? What?

'E's passed on! This turkey is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e
rests in peace! If you hadn't put 'im in the platter 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the
bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-TURKEY!!

Did Hell freeze over or did I enter the 'Twilight Zone'? I had to read the correction a couple of times before I believed it. (I'm half expecting someone to post that the website was hacked and there was NO correction issued.)

Good for the NY Times. Short and to the Point. Not blaming anyone else. No claiming they weren't informed and didn't get an official briefing about the turkey.

How many other major sites have acknowledged their error in reporting about that turkey? I can't think of many. I wonder why they just realized the turkey was real?

I thought "Bush's Fake Turkey" was fated to become an urban legend we'd be hearing about decades from now. It still may. However, it's nice to see the correction in the NY Times.

However, they didn't correct the overall statement that included the mistake, which is still just as erroneous in its understanding of the American public. Berke's comment, let us recall, was:

There are also the manufactured surprises, like Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad, which drew praise even from Democrats. (The public relations bonanza fizzled after the press reported that Mr. Bush had posed with a mouth-watering - but fake - turkey.)

Does anyone besides a NY Times analyst think that the average red-state American would have thought Bush visiting the troops didn't really mean anything to the troops if the prop he'd been holding had been plastic? Does anyone besides a genius from the New York media think it would have mattered a goddam bit to the troops compared to the fact of seeing him there?

Most of the people I know could have cared less if Bush had gone to Baghdad and unveiled the Macy Thankgiving Day Parade huge, inflatable turkey. The fact that he went was important, not what idiots in the media wanted to focus on. Although some of the comparisons between his visit and Hillary's were pretty neat.

The NY Times ignores & buries the fact that Bush's visit was in order to boost troop morale & to reassure Iraqis of our commitment. Pinch Sulzberger & his crew are succeeding in their slanting of the news, despite the occasional correction.

I have to wonder why the apology now, when all other indicators say there has been no change of heart for the better at the NYT.

Best Guess: they got wind of something that was going to expose their foolishness anyway, maybe a Repub election ad, or a Fox TV special, or whatever.

But otherwise .... why now? They've been deliberately dishonest about the turkey all this time, and they are still just as dishonest as ever on other stories. I may not like them, but I don't think they're stupid; there's a self-motivated reason for this in there somewhere.

Like Chris said, good for the NYT, after all, the administration didn't put out a press release to the Western media before the dinner, explaining that all the food wasn't fake, so how could our razor sharp, never miss a trick, brave, in the thick of things, western journalists be expected to come to anything else but the obvious conclusion that the food at a thanksgiving dinner that Bush attended was fake.
I mean if millions of ordinary people sitting in their homes thousands and thousands of miles awsay from Baghdad didn't find out until a couple of days after the event that the turkey was real, then how the hell were JOURNALISTS supposed to find out??

Just another example of the Bush administrations failure in Iraq. Mr Bush, in future, please remember to send out the gold embossed statements to the WESTERN MEDIA about these things !

So yeah, good on the NYT for having the ability to find the truth about these things and correct them. (Even if it is around 8 months after everbody else knew)

To John's (slightly veiled) point, yeah, the NYT may still be pathetically slanted, but at least they fessed up briefly rather than offer eight paragraphs of "the dog ate my homework" like the WaPo guy did. That letter is just PATHETIC.

Sean, the reason why we obsessed over the "fake turkey" line, was because it was repeated over and over by biased journo's and commenters, who mostly knew it wasn't true. Every time it was bought up by us, it was as a response to morons like you trying to get the line up and running again.
And who is willing to bet that hopel;essly naive f9/11 crew will still not accept that the turkey was real even after NYT's retraction.

JB:
no one i know uses a turkey, fake or otherwise, to bash bush or his disciples esp. when bigger issues like deception, corruption and staggering incompetence are obviously more effective sticks. if you want to keep some stupid turkey misreporting alive instead of engaging with anything actually important, don't let me stop you.

Now, I'm confused, and suspicious. Who do believe? The NY Times, which is and has been wrong on all important issues for 75 years. Can you say Walter Duranty? I thought you could. Now, that the NY Times is saying the turkey was real, it must be wrong. The turkey really was plastic. I know, I'm late jumping on board the 'fake turkey' bandwagon, but I just don't believe the Times. What's a enquiring mind to think?

What's sad is that you can't let go of the turkey while desperately ignoring the fact the US Senate concludes that the reasons for the Iraq invasion are bogus, reasons you wholeheartedly defended. I say defended instead of defend, because you have been eerily silent on the issue for some time.

The plastic turkey myth is meaningful, not only because we’ve had a lot of fun with it, which we have, but also because so many leftist journalists have obsessed on it. One of them says it will be taught at journalism schools for years as a preeminent instance of how politicians use imagery to deceive. The journalists have used this myth to bury the real significance of Bush’s Baghdad visit & to bash Bush instead. They would like it if, for future journalists, Bush’s entire Presidency were buried in this plastic turkey imagery. It’s a journalistic exercise in practicing what you preach against. Psychological projection, as a professional technique. For all involved, whether they like it or not,

As for the justifications for the Iraq invasion, I never thought that, in terms of justification, it should matter whether we ended up finding masses of WMD ready to rumble in Iraq. I said that a number of times (at Lucianne.com, not here) before the invasion. There were plenty more justifications, including but not limited to justifications in terms of WMD. They may be found in Bush’s various speeches. Just for instance, 18 UN mandatory resolutions, right up through Resolution 1441, were enough.

Yes! Tell us how the intellegence was wrong, which was apparently something fatfigners didn't hear the first time around when David Kay said it. He needs to hear it again. But don't break it to him that this buries the BUSHLIED!!! story, because it might come as a shock to him.

He still hasn't figured out how to read Peter Singer or that Al Qaeda was responsible for 9-11. He's been spending too much time dithering around with the anti-semites at www.whatreallyhappened.com, after all.

Sean, I wasn't reffering to the Times as "your lot"
I was reffering to whiny little morons who think lying is fine as long as it serves your purpose. Like I said, suck it up babe, cos every one of these proven lies shows the public what you lot are really like.

because you have been eerily silent on the issue for some time.

Fatfingers,
sort of like the silence from the "no danger from Saddam" idiots now that its been shown that there really is reason to suspect that Iraq sought uranium.

sort of like the silence from the "come on, show us the WMD, ANY WMD's" people - now that WMD have shown up in Iraq (its suddenly changed to "show us the stockpiles of *new* WMD, ANY *new* WMD")

sort of like the silence over David Kay saying that after seeing what he has in Iraq, that the case for war for future safety was even stronger than originally thought.

Sort of like that silence about the mass graves that have turned out to be even worse than most people thought

Is that the sort of silence you are talking about Fatfingers?

You apologize for nearly condemning our children to a future full of terrorists armed with Iraqi supplied WMD and I'll apologize for believing the CIA (and every other major intelligence organization in the world) over Iraqs stockpiles at the time.

Although some of the comparisons between his visit and Hillary's were pretty neat.

In advance of Hillary's visit to Baghdad, some press liason types politely inquired as to whether some soldiers from New York wanted to eat dinner with her in the chow hall. None volunteered (those that ate with her had to be drafted). The contempt for her is just staggering. Know what the ATC guys codenamed Hillary's helicopter?

It's really funny to see the comments in soldier's blogs and e-mails home. The MSM and clowns like Ted Kennedy are completely transparent to them. There's none of this "Oh my gosh, are the people back home still supporting us?" It's more like "I saw the clip of that guy on CSPAN yesterday. What an a--hole!"

I said it before and I will say it again, as many times as it takes, for the benefit of people who can't think of a new argument (i.e., trolls):

I DON'T CARE ABOUT SADDAM'S WMDs! Whether he had them or not, the single incontestable fact is that he was a sadistic, murdering tyrant with billions of dollars of disposable income, who was perfectly willing to fund any and all terrorists who wished to do damage to Western civilization, because Western civilization was all that stood in his path toward conquering the Middle East (and thus, the whole oil-dependent world). Anybody who doesn't understand that is an idiot.

I don't think GWB lied. I think he believed what everybody else believed: that Saddam had WMDs. It was an intelligence failure, but if so, then it was a fortuitous one for us. Because now Saddam is gone for good and we can set about making the world a litttle less hospitable to his ilk.

Quick, someone murk up Rebecca's moral clarity by babbling about Iraq's "sovereignity" and claiming we had no right to act against a murderous tyrant who wasn't murdering us because his army was a terrible shot anyway!

Quick, someone murk up Rebecca's moral clarity by babbling about Iraq's "sovereignity" and claiming we had no right to act against a murderous tyrant who wasn't murdering us because his army was a terrible shot anyway!

We trolls have never had an independent thought so - what Sortelli said!